Equine Business Accounting Tips

The life of an equine business owner is already very busy and it’s easy to forget about doing your bookkeeping. Whether you do the books yourself or hire someone, there are some steps you can take right now that are easy and can set your business up for success. Here are some essential equine business accounting tips so your books are always organized. 

1. Keep Your Personal And Business Finances Separate

Don’t just throw your income and other funds into your personal account. Instead keep your personal and business finances completely separate. Depending on your business legal structure, this might be mandatory but even when it’s not, having a separate business account makes it much easier to keep track of business finances. 

The last thing you want to have to do is spend time searching through every single transaction to find one particular piece of business you did. To make banking hassle-free, open a new bank account just for your business. This will make your life much easier at tax-time too. With a separate account, you can be a lot more organized. Your personal finances stay personal and your business finances stay in your business account. 

2. Make Sure Your Records Are Neat And Tidy

Some people work well in clutter, whereas others cannot work if their documents aren’t neat and organized. This might work in your personal life, but when it comes to the books for your business, try and keep them as organized as you can, so you don’t have to waste time looking for something when your accounts are all over the place. If you employ an accountant or bookkeeper, your costs will be lower if you have all your paperwork collected together as you won’t be paying them to hunt down receipts and invoices.

Tidy records are easier to keep with accounting software for small businesses. This means you can save time searching for things and more time actually running your equine business. When tax deadlines are coming up, you will be very glad to put the time into making sure your records are neat and tidy. 

3. Remember And Stick To Tax Deadlines

Whatever you need to do to remember when tax deadlines are coming up, do it. Set reminders on your phone, mark them in your calendar, whatever helps you. A looming tax deadline can be stressful, especially if you’re rushing because you forgot it was coming up, Any mistakes you make can take longer to process and cash flow can be harder to predict when you aren’t sure about your tax liabilities.

Paying your taxes doesn’t have to be scary. Note down the tax deadline, set a reminder in advance so you have plenty of time to fill out your tax return without any mistakes and the rest is simple. The taxman won’t be on your case, your records will be up-to-date, and you can get it down, and then forget about it until the next deadline. 

4. Keep All of Your Receipts

Keep any receipts from business purchases so that you can claim for any expenses and also claim back VAT if eligible. What you can claim will depend on your business, but an accountant should be able to help you determine what you can claim. Expenses could be anything from advertising costs to horse feed. Keep hold of any business-related expenses and file them in those neat records you set up. If you’ve chosen to use accounting software, many of them have inbuilt receipt management software which allows you to photograph and scan a receipt on your phone and then upload it into your accounting software.  Not only does this make it easier to keep track of expenses compared to throwing paper receipts in a shoebox but it also makes it easy to find an old receipt if you need to re-order an item or claim on a manufacturers warranty.